"This season, we took the classic approach and went with smoky eyes," Chanel's global creative director of makeup, Peter Philips, explained backstage at the show. "There are 87 or 90 outfits, with big floral prints, so we needed something that would fit with everything."

"It's a dark eye, with dark iridescence," Philips said; he painted on Chanel's new Quadra Eye Shadow in Regard Perle that will be out in March of next year. Swirling together black and green shades from the palette, Philips pressed the shadow into the lid and extended it up almost to the brow—smudging it under the lash lines and on the outer edges for a true smoky effect. Then, taking Chanel Le Crayon Khôl Intense Eye Pencil in Noir, he lined the entire eye, getting it into the roots of the lashes. He finished the look with Chanel Inimitable Intense Mascara, using it to coat the top and bottom lashes.

Philips dusted peachy-pink blush lightly over the cheeks, then dabbed a sheer white highlighter with a subtle gold sheen to the temples. "We're making [the skin] luminous," Philips said. "One of Karl's inspirations was a black and white photo of people in the garden—and while it may have been black and white, it was still luminous."

The lips were also kept soft with a sheer, incredibly shiny pink lipstick. "The lips are almost wet-looking, just like the fountains," Philips said, speaking of the fountains at the Grand Palais, where the show was held.

The models' nails were painted with a pearlescent, emerald-black polish that matched their eye shadow (expect the color, called Black Pearl launching in the spring, to be the must-have shade for the season.) The toes were then painted a pearly-beige to match the marble on the floor of the Grand Palais.

The hair, created by stylist Sam McKnight, was kept simple and youthful—pulled back into a sleek ponytail. "We wanted a severity to the hair that was more schoolgirl than dominatrix, so it has a youthful shine to it," he said backstage. "We added a black line down the part for a more graphic look and then each model has an accessory pinned in the back."

McKnight started out by applying mousse to the roots and combing it all the way through to the tips. (He used almost a full can on each model to get the hair really slicked down.) He created a clean center part before pulling all the hair back into a low ponytail and securing it with an elastic.

He then wound three more elastics around the length of the hair, all about an inch apart from each other, to created a base for extensions to be attached to. Straightened with a flat iron and secured at the base of the model's real hair, the extensions made it so that each of the model's ponytails were the exact same length.

On model's with short hair, McKnight used even more mousse, then slicked the hair down using a blow-dryer with a diffuser attachment, as well as a net that was pushed onto the back of the models' heads. Blow-drying through the net, the hair literally was stuck to their heads when they were finished for a sleek, shiny style.

Every model had a thin black line drawn in their part, courtesy of Chanel Écriture de Chanel Automatic Liquid Eyeliner. "Karl came up with the idea. He wanted one graphic thing and asked what would happen if we painted on a line," Philips said. "The effect is almost disturbing—it adds a bit of weirdness to an otherwise classic look."

For each of the nearly 90 looks that came down the runway, there was a distinct hair accessory. They were either pinned above the ponytail or fastened around it, and came in all shapes and sizes—from feathers, to barrettes, to metal brooches. "We went through a few incarnations, even curly bubbles with ponytails, but the ones we chose are very chic. The clothes themselves are so frothy that we didn't need any more froth," McKnight explained.